Change of Heart (The True Heart Series Book 3) Page 6

  “We are protesting against the patriarchy. We want the Equal Rights Amendment. It’s the only way that our civil rights as women and LGBT will be safe. Right now, we’re defenseless and surviving only at the whim of the old, straight white men in charge,” Bernie said.

  Amy jotted that down on her notepad. She looked over at Rosa who shrugged. “She’s got a point,” Rosa said, over the grumbling hubbub. She and Steph had only been married a few months and she was worried that the so-called Christians were going to take away her rights to marry the woman she loved. “All these women are tired of the subjugation. Straight, gay, bi, trans, whatever, we’re all sick of it.”

  “What do equal rights mean to you?” Amy asked Bernie. She was in full reporter mode now. The women all hushed and looked at Bernie, curious as to her response.

  “You know, I was forced to live in the closet for years. I was constantly worried about being fired from my job,” Bernie said. “I remember when Connie, God bless her soul… she was a teacher, and had some trouble with a male coworker. He tried to blackmail her.”

  “For money?” Amy asked.

  “No, he harassed her with the threat of telling the principal about her immoral love affair with me. We lived with that threat until he died.”

  “My goodness, how long was that?” Clara asked.

  “Fifteen years. We lived in separate houses. We were afraid to move in together because people might find out about us. We were too old to pull the roommate thing and too young to pretend we were spinsters moving in together. We didn’t have a man to take care of us like society wanted,” Bernie said.

  Millie took her hand. “Oh, my love, that must have been so hard on you.”

  Bernie nodded. “I was so frightened for Connie. We were always on edge. I offered to break it off so she wouldn’t lose her job. She loved teaching and I didn’t want her to give up her career for me.”

  “How’d that bastard die?” Mabel asked referencing the blackmailer. “I hope you poisoned him.”

  Clara slapped Mabel’s arm. “Don’t be morbid.”

  “It was a freak accident. He was the janitor for the school. He was mopping the floor, slipped and hit his head on the drinking fountain,” Bernie said, then added, “His funeral was not well-attended. Connie’s funeral brought out lots of her students, old and new. She was beloved by all.”

  Amy thought back to her own coming out. It hadn’t been dramatic because her mother chose to ignore it and Amy hadn’t pressed it. In Fenton, she was just a girl who didn’t have a boyfriend. She was just nerdy enough to carry it off without being suspect.

  Then when she moved to New York City after high school, her girlfriend introduced Amy as her “lover.” At first, Amy had been embarrassed by the word because she thought it brought up only the sexual part of their relationship. But saying “girlfriend” was too confusing because if you had friends that were girls they were also your girlfriend. Then there was the word partner. Business partner or partner in life? It was all so confusing.

  “After he died, we moved in together. Connie had inherited her family’s house. It had three bedrooms so we made up one of the rooms to look like my bedroom. You know, a decoy bedroom just in case anyone sniffed around. Stupid waste of a room,” Bernie said.

  “How about women not able to get a loan or a credit card in their own name until 1974?” said a woman that Rosa was finger printing.

  “Yeah, why are the men always holding the purse strings?” another woman called out.

  “Getting and keeping your own money meant squirreling it away in the cookie jar,” said yet another woman.

  “And no bank loans made it hard for a woman to start her own business. Pretty hard to get out from under the patriarchy,” said Millie.

  Amy was furiously scribbling everything the women said.

  “Forget about joint tenancy on house loans, or getting a checking account with your partner’s name on it said a woman standing in the doorway.

  “Pro choice!” a young woman behind her said. “Why do men get to decide about my body?”

  “Social Security survivorship!” yelled another woman

  “All those things happened,” Bernie said. “And I don’t want to go back to that time.” She shook her head. “I had lots of troubles after Connie died. Her kids came and took all her stuff, including her savings bonds. They left me pretty hard-up. The only way I got some of Connie’s ashes was because I knew the funeral director. I wasn’t even allowed to go to the funeral. Luckily, Connie had squirreled away some money in an old Saltines can. That’s how I got her ashes to Hawaii.”

  Millie stood and walked straight up to Chief Bob Ed. The top of her head only came up to his chin. “That’s the real crime here, Bob Ed. Not women marching for their rights, but that we don’t have rights in the first damn place.”

  Chief Bob Ed shuffled his feet. There was a long moment of silence. Finally, he spoke, “You’re all free to go. I’m issuing a post-demonstration permit. No laws have been broken today.”

  The mayor sputtered. “You can’t do that! They’ve broken the law. These women need to be punished.”

  “Seems to me they’ve been punished enough,” Chief Bob Ed said.

  A big roar went up from the women. Millie patted the chief on his stubbly cheek and said, “You’re one of the good ones.”

  Chapter Five

  Susan sat next to Carrie on a park bench. They both gazed out at the calm waters of the lake. “I’d forgotten how beautiful Griffin Park is,” Carrie said.

  “After Belize? That’s saying something,” Susan said.

  Carrie had called Susan at the hospital and pleaded for an audience, telling Susan that she couldn’t run from her forever. In a town the size of Fenton, she was right. Susan decided that she’d deal with Carrie on her own terms. Getting her friends involved had not been a good idea. Rosa was furious, Steph was aggressive, and Parker had done her best, but to no avail.

  “I know I broke your heart,” Carrie said, chewing her cuticle.

  “Stop that,” Susan said. “You don’t need an infected nail bed on top of everything else.”

  “You never did get me to stop that bad habit,” Carrie said.

  “Carrie, please tell me what you’re doing here? Why come back? You hated Fenton.”

  “I didn’t hate Fenton. I was afraid I couldn’t live up to your standards.”

  “What does that mean? I never said anything like that,” Susan said. She gazed out at the lake. The sunlight made the water shimmer like a million broken pieces of glass. That was the problem. She was still broken with pieces gone missing, which prevented her from being the complete lover she wanted to be. Carrie’s desertion had broken something inside her and she wanted nothing more than to put her heart back together and hand it to Tess who was worth a thousand Carries.

  “I was never good enough for you,” Carrie said simply. “You had this upper-class upbringing. A fancy boarding school, a medical degree, no financial worries. You’re everything I was incapable of being.”

  Susan wondered if they were talking about the same relationship. Was this the reality of relationships? Two completely different sides that tried to meet in the middle? It was like the only thing left in the middle was a no-woman’s land of conjecture and confusion.

  “Making you feel inferior was not my intention. I set my life’s goals and went after them,” Susan said. She didn’t feel like apologizing for her life’s choices. Especially not to this woman.

  “Which is precisely what I didn’t do,” Carrie said. She stared at two figures playing disc golf in the distance.

  “Everyone eventually finds their path. I figured you would, too, given the chance. I wanted to give you that chance. I knew studying to be a doctor hadn’t worked out for you, but I would’ve supported anything you wanted to do and I have the financial means to do so. All you had to do was ask.”

  “I didn’t want to ask. I wanted to do it on my own,” Carrie said.

  Susan
frowned. She thought Carrie sounded like a sulky child. “I didn’t agree to meet you here so you could chide me or fight with me.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say it that way. I was so frustrated with myself for being such a fuckup. You know, I never told you my whole story. There was a lot about me that I hid. I wasn’t traveling around trying to find myself. I was living in Kansas City and going to meetings. I didn’t want anyone to know.”

  Susan looked at her quizzically. “What meetings?”

  Carrie sat silent, summoning up courage. “I was in NA for a long time.”

  “Narcotics Anonymous?” Susan asked. She’d helped people with opioid addictions go to rehab after their problem had been discovered. A lot of the time they’d come in with a scam injury and ask to be prescribed with pain medication. Soon it became evident that they were using her to get stoned, not for a major injury. Now, she’d found out that her choice for a life partner had been one of those people? She was flabbergasted.

  “I broke my ankle playing soccer. That’s when I got hooked on oxycodone. I tried to kick it on my own, but…” She shrugged helplessly. “I lost my career because I’d stolen a script pad during my residency and signed off on the prescriptions.”

  “You were on drugs when you were with me?”

  “No,” Carrie said.

  Susan looked dubious.

  “I swear I wasn’t,” Carrie said.

  Susan didn’t know whether to believe Carrie or not. She had already lied about so much. Having an addict for a girlfriend could have compromised her own reputation as a physician. She might’ve even lost her license. Would the Medical Board believe her when she told them she hadn’t written prescriptions for her drug-addicted girlfriend? She thought not. She tried to think back to her life with Carrie. Had she ever left her script pad out where Carrie could’ve had access to it?

  “And before you say anything, I didn’t ever forge a script from you,” Carrie said. She watched as the disc golf players looped around the far edge of the lake.

  “Of course you would say that,” Susan said.

  “I did a lot of things I’m not proud of. My NA group was a women’s group. There were a lot of lesbians struggling with opioid addictions.”

  Susan knew what that meant.

  “As you probably figured out, I slept with them,” Carrie said.

  “Them?” Susan asked. Who was this woman? Had she really almost married her?

  Carrie looked down at her hands. “You could say I slept my way around the table. It was such an emotional experience being able to tell people all the bad things you’d done when you were an addict. About the people you hurt, the stealing and lying to get the pills.”

  “So you doctor-shopped and then were going to marry one. What the hell, Carrie? You could’ve ruined my career as well as your own.”

  “I know that now. But I was clean by the time I met you. I wanted to start over, to forget that part of my life.”

  “So you lied to me about your past? That’s how you start over?”

  “I didn’t lie about all of it. I left the drug addiction part out because I knew you wouldn’t have anything to do with me if you knew.”

  “And you’d be correct,” Susan said. She got up and added, “Stay away from me. I mean it.” She walked away. This time she didn’t look back.

  ***

  Parker and Tess were playing Frisbee golf. As they came around the last bend by the lake Tess saw two women sitting on a bench off in the distance.

  Tess shaded her eyes with her hand. She stared at the two figures sitting on the park bench. Parker attempted to bring Tess’s focus back to the game by throwing a lousy shot. It fell way short of her usual par shot. “Crap, look at that. I must be really off today,” Parker said.

  Tess frowned at her. “You did that on purpose.”

  “You’re right. I did.” Parker was a notoriously bad liar.

  “Why? Because you don’t want me to see Susan sitting next to Carrie on that bench over there?”

  “Susan loves you. She detests Carrie. Whatever she’s doing, I’m sure she’s operating in your best interest.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Maybe you should listen to her side of the story before jumping to conclusions,” Parker said.

  “Pick up your disc and throw it again. I don’t want to win because we saw my girlfriend with her ex.”

  Parker retrieved her disc and walked back to the tee. She threw a perfect shot.

  Tess threw her disc. It landed several feet back from Parker’s. She stopped and watched as Susan got off the bench and marched back to her car. She drove out of the parking lot, leaving Carrie behind.

  Tess saw Carrie pull up her knees and lay her head on them. Maybe that was a good sign. Wasn’t it? Susan lived with her now. They had built a life together. Surely, Susan wouldn’t give all that up to go back to Carrie. Or would she?

  “Parker, do you ever wonder about Amy?” Tess asked.

  “What do you mean?” Parker threw her disc.

  “Like maybe love isn’t supposed to last forever. Maybe we fall out of love when the buzz of infatuation fades. Maybe we’re actually thinking compatibility is true love. What if Susan isn’t right for me? Or Amy isn’t right for you?” Tess said.

  Parker brushed the grass off her disc, and took her time considering the question. Tess liked that about Parker. She didn’t shrug off the hard questions with a platitude. “I think infatuation is like the hook in your heart, in a fly fishing sort of way. Then you get pulled in the boat, but instead of dying you are put into an ice chest full of water. And instead of getting fileted and eaten you become a beloved pet.”

  “Are you serious? That’s the grossest analogy I’ve ever heard.”

  Parker laughed. “Best I could do on short notice. I trust Amy with my heart, but that is no guarantee we will go the distance. I am grateful every day I wake up next to her and kiss her good morning. I do my best by her and pray that is enough.”

  “I’m worried.”

  “You probably should be,” Parker said.

  “That’s not what I wanted to hear,” Tess said. She threw her disc. It fell short. Again.

  “I told you I wouldn’t lie.”

  “And I respect that,” Tess said.

  “Love trouble is messing up your golf game.”

  “It’s messing up more than that.”

  “Do you want me to run Carrie over with my van?”

  “No!”

  “Then we’ll all have to learn to live with her,” Parker said, making another perfect throw.

  ***

  Tess stood at her kitchen counter and ferociously chopped carrots and broccoli. She was making a quiche and hoping Susan wouldn’t get stuck at the hospital and be late for dinner. The rest of her day off after playing disc golf had been spent tormenting herself and trying to figure out how she should react to the meeting she had witnessed.

  She put down the knife, went to the living room, and put on a Nina Simone CD. She and Susan routinely danced to the songs, getting close and sexual. Nina was good for foreplay. They’d usually end up in bed with the music still playing in the living room.

  Tess had been living in a happy bubble. Now, that happiness was threatened. She chastised herself. She didn’t know yet if she should feel threatened. She shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions.

  To keep herself busy, she watered her neglected houseplants. There were two giant ferns sitting in the front window that needed to be repotted and hung on the front porch. She hadn’t gotten around to doing that because Carrie had monopolized her brain. Thoughts and doubts about Carrie were invading her life from every direction. She’d been so content before and now she worried constantly.

  She went back to the kitchen, folded in the vegetables with the egg mixture, and stuck the quiche in the oven. She had forty minutes while it cooked. That was more than enough time to repot the ferns. Putting them into new pots might help her take back her life.

  S
he carried both ferns out to the porch and retrieved two large hanging pots from the gardening shed out back. Then she hauled out a bag of potting soil. She should have put the heavy bag into a wheelbarrow. Instead, she carried it in her arms, making her way to the front porch. She didn’t see the garden hose strewn across the lawn and she tripped. The potting soil bag hit the ground and one of the seams burst open, spilling dirt everywhere. Tess fell, sliding on the concrete path, and skinned her palms.

  It was more than she could handle. She sat up—and just like the bag of potting soil—her resolve split open and she erupted into angry tears.

  She knew she was unraveling and hated herself for it, but was unable to stop. She put her head on her knees and sobbed. It felt good to let it out. Wasn’t that the same thing she told the kids she helped? Get it out and then you can move on. Things would get better, but letting go had to happen first.

  So, she followed her own advice, and let go.

  ***

  Susan pulled her car up in the driveway. She saw Tess with her head on her knees, crying. The scene was somewhat self-explanatory. Putting together the clues, Susan knew Tess had been carrying a bag of potting soil, tripped over the nearby hose, and injured herself. Susan had spent most of the afternoon distracted, thinking about how she would tell Tess about her meeting with Carrie. She hadn’t come up with a viable plan and now did not seem like a good time. She decided she’d tell her later.

  Susan got out of the car and rushed to Tess. “Hey, baby, what happened? Are you hurt?”

  Tess brushed the tears away. “No, not really. I just scraped my palms.” She held her hands out toward Susan.

  “Ouch. Let’s get you cleaned up and pick out some of those pebbles,” Susan said, as she quickly examined Tess’s palms. She gently wiped away Tess’s tears.

  “I just wanted to repot and hang my ferns. I’ve been meaning to do it for days. I hate when I procrastinate,” Tess said.